


Strike A Match

by Tozette



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Gen, Sasuke Is A Good Big Brother, Sasuke Is A Terrible Big Brother, Sasuke Should Not Be Left In Charge Of Anything Ever, Tumblr Prompt, Uchiha Sasuke Big Brother Mode: Activate!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 03:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7919689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Tozette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasuke could have reversed time to save the world. He could have done it for his mother and his father, he could have done it for his clan or his village.</p><p>That's...</p><p>Those are sweet ideas. They're sort of like what might happen if you let Naruto imagine a motive for Sasuke to return to his hellish childhood. Save the village. Save the world. Be a hero.</p><p>Sasuke makes a <i>terrible</i> hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strike A Match

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt given by tumblr user teethreetee: "Instead of Itachi traveling back in time to save Sasuke, Sasuke traveling back to save Itachi." Well, all right.

Sasuke could have reversed time to save the world. He could have done it for his mother and his father, he could have done it for his clan or his village.

That's...

Those are sweet ideas. They're sort of like what might happen if you let Naruto imagine a motive for Sasuke to return to his hellish childhood. Save the village. Save the world. Be a hero.

Sasuke makes a _terrible_ hero.

He wakes up six years old, tiny with noodly limbs and with one burning purple iris and blood on his cheeks. He's absolutely silent when he gets up to clean himself off.

His plan is to save Itachi. Itachi is really all that's important to Sasuke. It's been that way since he was a child, and it's still that way now. Sasuke might develop new bonds but his life will always revolve around his brother. So he's going to save Itachi, because it's all that's ever been important, except he thinks to do that he'll have to save the clan.

Sasuke is too detached to feel much about the clan but Itachi does - or Itachi did, at least. He certainly deteriorates fast after the massacre. After he leaves. So, fine: ideally, Sasuke will prevent the massacre and keep Itachi safe with the rest of his family.

It's not a thought that makes him particularly happy or sad, it's like a checkbox on a list: save his family, fine.

He figures he can buy them time, at least, by ridding the world of Danzo's convoluted and short sighted plotting. From there... well, Sasuke's not great at long term planning, but once he has his goals in mind he's not easily thwarted.

When he gets up again that very morning Fugaku points out, apropos of nothing, that there's no call to be proud of himself until he's bested Itachi. Mikoto is demure as ever, serenely attending to her rice and salmon.

"It's all right," Itachi murmurs, "just keep doing your best. I'm very proud of my little brother."

And then there's a whole lecture about how Sasuke's coddled, how Itachi needs to focus more on the prestige of the clan and less on his precious little brother. Sasuke doesn't think he remembers the lecture but he finds he can almost mouth the words along with Fugaku.

Itachi nods and says "Yes, father," in all the right places, and then must hurry before listening politely to the commentary makes him late.

Sasuke looks at his father's hard mouth, his grim face, his eyes that see so little, and he feels... apathetic.

He pushes himself, digging beneath the numbness, and tries to dredge up something.

Ah. There it is.

He gives his dad a guileless stare and behind it there's nothing but bottomless contempt. It figures that Fugaku sends Sasuke on his way to the academy like he thinks he's a bit slow.

Maybe this clan is not the right environment for Sasuke's most precious person, after all.

Well.

Plans change.

Contempt shields Sasuke most of the time. There are flickers of heat and cold here and there: a flash of unexpected warmth when Shisui laughs, a spike of cool temper when somebody tells Sasuke he must do better, be better, earn their respect, earn his place, over and over. The comparison to Itachi is not favourable but Sasuke knows that no comparison to Itachi can be favourable.

Itachi is a gentle person, one who is clever and calculating and always tries his best. He tries earnestly to prevent the encroaching conflict between clan and village, he gives everything he has for them every day.

Sasuke, on the other hand...

It takes him a week in the past to realise that he will see this whole clan dead and he won't bat an eyelash. There's no point saving them. Their bloodline is powerful and fragile, and they're too vulnerable and too crazy to defend that power. If it's not the machinations of Madara, Obito, Orochimaru or Danzo, it'll be someone else.

Sasuke makes a terrible hero.

He's not sure what kind of comparison between them could possibly be favourable. Maybe he can get himself a congratulatory mug or something, commemorate having a slightly greater grasp of perspective than an eleven year old.

Itachi, of course, sees the matter with less nuance and more compassion: they are different people, and Sasuke is not learning the ninja arts during war time. Comparison is futile and rather silly.

"You're at the top of your class again? You're doing so well," Itachi says, not bothering to keep his voice down.

Sasuke's smile in return is quite genuine, although it's not really because of the compliment. Their parents aren't in the room but suddenly Sasuke realises that this interaction, and any number of other tiny ones he recalls, takes place in easy earshot of his father. Itachi is far more passive aggressive than he remembers. It is a small, secret delight.

Still, the comparison hovers over their household, executed over and over as their parents' eyes shift from one brother to the other. Sasuke is always found wanting, even sometimes by Mikoto. Perversely, though, she complains that he used to smile more. Her complaints are genuine even if they're gentler.

Itachi can't be there all the time to provide a buffer, either.

Sasuke wonders if he wouldn't have grown up to be pretty messed up anyway. Itachi killing the clan in his original timeline ensured it, but...

Morning by morning he looks at Fugaku, peering out from the face of a six year old. He has an expression that says butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, and idly he thinks _I could kill you and never even feel a thing._

Sasuke feels like an impostor, a cuckoo nestling, watching them all from behind a child's large dark eyes. He could be anyone, he thinks with contempt. This family is not safe. The clan is not safe.

Itachi notices, but he loves Sasuke too deeply to question him. His eyes whirl red and black from time to time, seeking out Sasuke's chakra, examining him for illusions. He finds nothing, because there's nothing to find.

"Is something bothering you?" he asks quietly, every few months.

And Sasuke shakes his head and Itachi lays a hand on his shoulder and they go on.

Mikoto keeps her own counsel, as always, but any changes she sees in Sasuke she clearly attributes to growing up.

Fugaku doesn't notice a thing.

In hindsight, Sasuke does not think very much of his father.

Sasuke breathes. He breathes carefully and he does it a lot.

For a six year old, Sasuke is getting really excellent at breathing exercises.

"Meditating!" Shisui cries, like he can't think of anything less satisfying. He finds Sasuke in the clan library, buried in the dusty disorder between history texts nobody ever wants to read.

He swoops in and messes up Sasuke's hair, then slings an arm around him. Shisui is physically affectionate, cheerful and oddly sweet-natured, and he is one of the brightest spots in Sasuke's return to this time.

"What does a brat like you need to meditate for?"

Sasuke wonders if Shisui actually doesn't know the difference between breathing exercises and meditation. Meditation is what he _should_ be doing; breathing exercises are what he _is_ doing. For now they are providing Sasuke with the means to slow his heart rate and calm down just a tiny bit. He's awful at medical jutsu, but he desperately needs to stop hearing his heart thundering in his skull every time Fugaku opens his mouth. Juvenile hypertension isn't in his plans.

"I'm learning to sense people."

Shisui clicks his tongue. "You're six going on sixty," he declares, all drama and tragedy.

"Mm." That sounds accurate to how Sasuke feels, yes.

Still, he looks sideways at Shisui, cracking one eye open. Most of his family makes him feel nothing at all now, and the ones who do provoke him to emotion just make him angry. Looking at Shisui, though, instead of numb and angry he feels -- protective. He is hot under the skin with the burn of his own overwhelming chakra. He thinks this is how dragons feel, huge and terrible, hunched over their eggs.

Shisui will live this time. There's no want or hope or plan about it. Shisui will live. Itachi will live. And Sasuke doesn't care what he has to kill or who he burns to see it happen.

Shisui frowns at him, a tiny flinch around his eyes. Sasuke leans into Shisui's strong, too-young arm, just for a second. He's right to expect it will distract him from that flicker of fire and smoke in his chakra. Sasuke's not demonstrative. Shisui smiles down at him.

"There are more important things than training," he reminds Sasuke anyway.

"Yes," Sasuke agrees. It's comforting to think that even when they understand nothing about one another, when they have such wildly differing natures, they both look at each other when they share this sentiment.

It's not always so clear cut.

But Shisui stares at the Naka River after sunset, sometimes, and Sasuke wonders what he's thinking. He wonders if Shisui's eyes can see the future. Sometimes he looks tired in a way Sasuke recognises, and he thinks he understands exactly the appeal of that fast-moving river. It's no coincidence, he realises, that Shisui ends up there in the end.

There are a lot of things he never noticed the first time around. He notices them now.

In his own time learning the truth of the massacre made Sasuke think the clan were stupid, easily led and incompetent. The truth is there's nothing stupid about the Uchiha clan elders. Their fears are reasonable, their concerns are valid. That's why it's such a good trap.

Fugaku, too, is the worst possible leader at the worst possible time. He's a clever ninja, but that almost makes it worse: he focuses intently, narrowly, and searches for hidden meanings and underhanded tactics. He is resolute. He is unbending and unbreakable. He holds fast to what he knows to be true and nothing will sway him once he's turned his hand to a course. He leads them down the merry path to ruin and he does it steadily and implacably.

And the clan, this stupid proud clan, feels so deeply. Every last one of them, from the most fragile grandmother to the tiniest child, feels so strongly that Sasuke can almost _smell_ it. It's the curse of their blood, so much more than any 'hatred': they don't get angry, they rage; they don't get sad, they despair.

There's so much desperation in the air Sasuke is almost sick with it.

"You're a good kid, little cousin," sighs Shisui sometimes, murmuring it like a lifeline. Sasuke looks young, but he knows that tone.

Sasuke has never felt compelled to hug anybody in his life, but here and now he takes Shisui's wrist in his small, pale hand. He holds tightly, feeling the sure slow thump of his pulse. They've a year yet, at least, and Shisui cannot break before then.

"It will be all right." He breathes it to him like a secret.

Shisui clings to him, harder than he has any business clinging to a child. He buries his face in Sasuke's hair and inhales the sweet childish smell of his skin. It's like breathing exercises for idiots who can't ever stop moving, Sasuke thinks.

Sasuke lets him. Sasuke is barely seven and Shisui isn't really an adult either. _Isn't this bleak,_ thinks Sasuke. _Isn't this cruel._

He doesn't do much to stop it. Trying to stop the Uchiha clan from boiling over here and now is like fighting against the tide: it's pointless and it just makes you feel stupid and depressed. Danzo is stupid to try to have all of them murdered - he's incredibly short sighted, Sasuke thinks -- but there's no real stopping either of them.

If Sasuke was in charge he'd wipe out the adults. The teenagers and kids can make new generations. But he's not so he does nothing. Sasuke is seven. He's not contributing a lot right now. Not yet. It'll be time to act soon, but for now Sasuke waits and watches and wonders how they came to this.

Sometimes he wonders what Madara, the real one, would think of the clan now. Obito clearly thinks they have to go, but how much of that's Obito's own bitterness and how much is Madara and how much is Zetsu controlling Madara--

Their motives are tangled and opaque, even to Sasuke.

He spends his time at the academy instead. It's dead boring and instead of working hard and learning new things, most of Sasuke's training goes into conditioning. He was a strong man as an adult, perfectly capable of putting his hand right through another person.

It's weird to think he grew from this.

He doesn't go out of his way to befriend Naruto. Naruto is a good friend, but he's also a nosy annoying busybody, and if (when) Sasuke has to leave in a hurry he does not want Naruto asking questions at the top of his lungs.

Still. Even if he's not going out of his way to befriend Naruto, not actively shunning or ignoring him means they're on better terms than Naruto is with most people.

One time he gives him a pencil when no one else will.

"You know you're not getting that back," says Shikamaru in a bored drawl.

"Mm," says Sasuke, and then ignores him.

From then Sasuke is pretty high on Naruto's list of okay people, and the things that says about the rest of the village are pretty damn dire.

"You're not to associate with that child," says Fugaku flatly after school that same day. There's no way of telling how he knows, but Sasuke's not surprised that he does. Ninja like to gossip. It keeps them alive.

Sasuke's mouth flattens into a grim line.

Mikoto murmurs something, some low-voiced protest, and her husband turns on her. He's as tight as a tripwire.

"They already blame our clan for--" Fugaku stops. Swallows. Breathes.

Mikoto looks unhappy, but she doesn't rebut this.

Sasuke is so sick of this place. This clan is exhausting. This village is exhausting.

Sasuke has no plans to associate with Naruto, right up until somebody tells him not to. Sasuke sits next to him in class the next day and every day going forward. He stares their teacher down with the coldest expression he can pull off on his childish face.

His father isn't happy. He has extra chores to do, but it isn't like Sasuke is using his free time for very much anyway.

"Sometimes you have to go along to get along," Itachi cautions him gently, when he returns from a month long mission and realises that there's a war of attrition taking place in their suddenly very spotless house.

"Sometimes," Sasuke agrees, pulling a weed mercilessly out by the roots.

His brother sighs. "Well, it's probably good for that child to have some friends, anyway."

Itachi might be just the littlest bit amused, Sasuke thinks. Probably because he's not the one weeding Aunt Etsuko's whole garden.

"Hey, that looks like good practice for D-ranks." Shisui appears out of nowhere, as is his way. "Nice work!" He claps Sasuke on the shoulder and nearly sends him sprawling into a rosebush.

Itachi flings out one arm to catch him just as Sasuke catches himself, and Shisui rolls his eyes so hard it's a wonder he doesn't lose them.

Whatever slapstick Sasuke is providing, though, it only lasts until they all turn their heads to a sound and see two of their clan elders walking along between houses. Both are watching. Both have pronounced frowns and disappointed looks for all three of them.

Shisui makes a face, but the energy drains right out of Itachi and he looks exactly like he's just come back from a four week mission. He looks exhausted and bleak and guarded.

Sasuke follows the elders with his eyes. It would be so easy to follow them, to edge into the shadows behind them and send them both tumbling into a red and black nightmare world. The urge is tempting, and for a moment he feels like a sparrow before a cobra: still and silent in the path of something terrible. It would be _so easy_. They're old and -- not fragile, but their reflexes are dull, their muscles are eroded. He thinks about the thin softness of wrinkled skin...

"We should report," Itachi says flatly. Sasuke blinks and the moment is gone.

Itachi isn't looking at Sasuke, but Shisui is. He doesn't say anything, though -- he just looks at Sasuke, and then his eyes slide to Itachi. His mouth curls, just a little. Then --

"Work, work, work," he says, all sighing and melodramatic. But it's not like he disagrees, so Itachi leads him away, toward the village proper and the Hokage's tower.

And... That's the tone of it, really. Itachi responds to the reek of desperation in the clan compound by getting as far away as possible as often as possible.

Sasuke hadn't noticed it the first time around, but in hindsight it's little wonder he skyrockets through the ranks. He spends more time with ANBU than he does at home and he works himself to the bone.

He abandons Sasuke to the clan with a startlingly articulate sense of guilt.

"Sorry, little brother," he says, and Sasuke is old enough this time to know the ache in his voice. He's so terribly sincere.

The genuine regret and uncertainty in Itachi feels like an icy kick in the gut every time. It makes Sasuke want to forgive him all over again. He wants to absolve him, keep him safe from the spectres of guilt and worry.

It's _exhausting._

He starts tracking his bother's movements in and out of the house. Even this young Itachi is frighteningly good, and tracking him is hard work. When he's in the village he doesn't sleep in their house more than one night in three. Sasuke thinks he must be bedding down with Shisui at first but --

But no, Itachi is pacing the compound silently and unnoticed, stressed and repetitive like a tiger in captivity.

That's... not ideal.

"What are you doing up, Sasuke?" He asks one night when Sasuke is sloppy. Sasuke's alarmed to realise how little it takes to be noticed. Itachi is very, very good.

He hesitates for half a second. "I can't sleep," he says.

That much is true, although Sasuke's nightmares aren't the restless dreams of a child surrounded by stressors he doesn't understand. Sasuke has sharingan dreams of his own now, crystal-clear memories that claw their way up from the abyss at night. They're so familiar he gets restless when they don't come.

He regrets saying it, because making Itachi stay with him means he won't even get to doze without the fear of waking up with the rinnegan active in one eye and the accursed mangekyo whirling in the other. It's not exactly a state he can explain away, that one.

On the other hand, making Itachi watch over his sleepless nights has the effect of soothing Itachi, too.

He'd seemed so big when Sasuke was younger but Itachi too is really only a child.

So Sasuke says "Nii-san," and childishly whines until his big-little-brother climbs into bed with him. He matches his breathing to Itachi's before he slows it down, breath by breath, forcing the unconscious rhythm upon his brother. He banks his chakra low and soothing.

It takes three nights, spread out, before Itachi even starts to doze. When he does it is fitful. He jerks awake every few moments in flinching confusion, scanning the room and curling tighter around Sasuke before he sleeps again. His chakra flickers restlessly even when he does sleep.

Sasuke stays awake to watch over him. Over time, he starts threading his own chakra through Itachi's. It's harder than it sounds; he can't afford for Itachi to notice how purposefully he does it, and Itachi notices a lot. When they're both cocooned in Sasuke's energy, curled beneath the blankets on his childhood bed, Itachi sleeps like a baby.

He breathes evenly. He sleeps like he's exhausted, deep and insensible with his dark hair spread everywhere and shining in the moonlight. He even drools a little into Sasuke's pillow, a thing Sasuke should find gross but just... doesn't.

It just makes him feel ancient, older than ever. Looking at Itachi like this, young and sleepy and trusting, makes Sasuke feel crazed and far out of control. He is frightened and reckless in a way he's never been, _never._ He is protective of Shisui, but Itachi is the one who draws the wild, mad things out of him and guides them unthinking into the light.

Itachi, sweet and vulnerable in his sleep, makes him furious, makes him fiercer and colder and meaner than ever.

Itachi is the one who makes him a monster.

There used to be revenge and brother and love and hate and madness; now when Sasuke looks at Itachi there exists _mine_ and _precious_ and the low steady thrum of _get away from him_ and  ** _I'll kill you first._**

Sasuke has to be calm, has to think clearly. It's so hard with all the rage in his head, but -- but baby steps. Itachi is tired. Sasuke will give him somewhere safe to sleep.

Sasuke is relearning empathy and it is so, so much harder than he remembers.

One morning in February he catches Itachi's hand before he can poke Sasuke in the forehead. (It is, to be clear, possibly the most aggravating way Itachi shows his affection.) "Nii-san. It's okay," he assures him.

It probably isn't quite the right thing to say because Itachi looks like Sasuke's breaking his heart. "Sorry," he says quietly, again.

"Work hard," Sasuke tells him, blank faced through the anger unfurling in his belly, expanding through his chest.

Itachi looks at him, ducks his head a little to meet Sasuke's eyes, and smiles. "Of course. Be good, little brother."

Itachi does, undoubtedly, work hard. He's made captain now and the day is coming ever closer.

Shisui is getting more and more restless, and the tension in the compound has reached intolerable levels. It escapes nobody's notice.

Sasuke practices breathing. He feels like he's clinging to sanity by the nails. Itachi will live. Shisui will live. The rest of the clan can rot.

He goes missing, lost by clan standards -- although Sasuke is perfectly aware of where he is, so he's hardly missing or lost. If he was an adult, they'd call him a missing nin. As a child, that's "lost". Really, he just isn't where they expect him to be.

Mikoto and Fugaku grow unexpectedly grim, considering how little they think of Sasuke when he is there. He doesn't check in on them often - he has to travel a bit. He's young, unfortunately, but he has things to do.

Sasuke damns his clan the moment he returns to this time and decides he'll do nothing to fix their circumstances. To be fair, there isn't much he can do -- but he's all out of sympathy, too. And he never was that interested in saving the village, either. Konoha's Naruto's dream, let him defend it. The world? Well, yes, all right. He needs something to stand on while he's saving Itachi, after all.

So that's what he goes to deal with first.

If Kaguya manages to salvage anything from the bloody mess he's made of her plans, he'll be surprised. He'll also be ready for her.

She still might. With Zetsu burned to ashes in a hellish black fire, she still might. With Madara - poor, ancient Madara-sama, mad progenitor of their glorious, short-lived clan - smeared in a bloody mess underfoot in the quiet underground of the mountain's graveyard, she still might.

But Sasuke rather doubts it.

Itachi needs Obito to help him kill the clan, of course, and Sasuke waits politely for that to happen. He can't refuse Itachi anything, and he'd never make him do it all alone. Never.

He fishes Shisui out of the Naka River in the meantime.

"You-- _Sasuke,_ " gasps his cousin, half-drowned and all blind, but it's not like Sasuke's chakra's hard to distinguish. "Where have you been? --You smell like blood, you--" he gives a wet rattle.

Sasuke isn't the only one who smells like blood, although he finds himself being very gentle with Shisui. He's still terrible at healing jutsu but he knows his first aid. If Shisui doesn't hurl himself into the river to _drown himself again like a moron_ then he'll certainly live.

The only healing jutsu Sasuke can reliably perform is the one they use to reattach optic nerves. The eye he gives Shisui is one of his own, which means it is -- maybe -- Itachi's, given that it still blooms with the mangekyo even in this timeline. But Shisui will need something with which to see the world.

Besides, Sasuke's own teacher did just fine with only one eye.

The first thing he seems to notice is the rinnegan, of course. _"Sasuke."_

"It's going to be okay," Sasuke insists, "but we can't leave Itachi alone after this. We can't." Sasuke doesn't have a lot of room left to think -- all he knows is Itachi will have to kill them. Itachi will hurt. Itachi cannot possibly be planning to leave his own execution to Sasuke, because Sasuke is now missing. And that, too, must hurt.

Sasuke's angry with the way things have turned out. He's not sure what he expected.

"After what," says Shisui, uncertain.

"You burdened him with protecting the clan name and the village. There's only one way forward," Sasuke says implacably. "Come on. We need to be out of the village well before nightfall. We'll come back," he adds when Shisui opens his mouth. "Itachi will need us afterwards."

Sasuke never really considers what his supposed disappearance will do to Itachi which is perhaps an oversight. With Sasuke gone and Shisui gone, Itachi agrees to kill the clan with very little prompting, and the massacre is days early.

He's a ghost, and he seems apt to follow orders until they see him killed. Sasuke is lucky he's so used to being angry.

Shisui is recovering, but Sasuke reports to him anyway, hidden away as they are in Madara's old haunt. The statue is long gone, the desiccated body of the ten tails burned to ash, and may Amaterasu guide them. Sasuke's not sure if that was his wisest idea, ultimately, but he's not keeping that thing around.

Danzo's plan goes off without a hitch. At first.

Shisui's distress is evident. "How could he," he says, and "They don't deserve," and "But he never," and all these soft accusing things. Sasuke would sooner have him get them out of the way without Itachi in easy hearing, but they grate.

Most of all he asks: " _Why?"_

"You know why," says Sasuke eventually. He's not actually sure, but he hopes Shisui does.

He's never seen his own eye cry like that. Clear tears, accompanied by huge ragged sobs. Shisui starts crying and he cannot seem to stop. His whole body heaves with the force of it.

Sasuke knows the feeling.

And... Yeah. Shisui knows why.

Sasuke stays with him for as long as he can, and, feeling even more monstrous than usual, he drugs him to sleep when he has to leave. He can't let Shisui interfere, obviously, but --

Well. Caring about people sure is inconvenient.

Obito never considers the impact of a missing eight year old in his plans, because why on earth would he. While Itachi is busy conspiring with their cousin, Sasuke pays Danzo a visit. He still has Shisui's eye, after all, and Sasuke would like to return it. The Uchiha clan and the village have taken enough pieces of Shisui.

Sasuke takes Danzo's own eye for good measure, too. He's too tired to draw out the killing. He doesn't even know the Root agents' names, and Danzo doesn't yet need to be killed over and over just to get rid of him. Not much can stand in Sasuke's way these days.

Sasuke cuts his head off, and it would be clean and execution style but he doesn't have the upper body strength. That's an oversight that Danzo probably wishes Sasuke hadn't made.

Obito is next.

It is a hard fight, but the outcome is a given.

By the end of the day Sasuke has spent most of it wading hip-deep in blood. He has held Shisui while he cries. And then he's gone and killed and killed until even the monster inside his head is replete, full with blood and glutted on death.

Sasuke finds Itachi standing still in the forest outside Konoha. He is bloody too, but he stands still there, armed with the things that he used to kill their family. He is exhausted.

"Hi, nii-san," he says, slithering tiredly down a tree. Even for an S-class ninja with the very great advantages of looking like a small child and being entirely unexpected, today's been long and difficult. Sasuke's running almost as low on chakra as Itachi is.

"--Sasuke?" There's a pause. A blink. "What happened to your eye?"

"It's--" it takes Sasuke a second to realise that Itachi means the other one, the missing one, that Sasuke doesn't have the energy to expose his eye right now.

"I gave it to Shisui," he admits.

"Shisui's dead."

Sasuke shakes his head. "Not yet. He's getting better. Come on--" and Sasuke takes him by the hand.

"Sasuke--"

"I'll explain later. I promise. Nii-san, I promise."

Itachi hesitates, but Sasuke thinks it's more for show.

"All right."

The mountain's graveyard is no place to live, but it's well hidden and for now it'll do.

Sasuke has a lot of explanations to give, but that can wait until they've rested. It can certainly wait until he has Itachi and Shisui safe under his own protective gaze again.

When dawn breaks, there will be no Uchiha left in the village. The clan compound is strewn with bodies, Root is decimated, Danzo is dead. Obito Uchiha will be found dead in the middle of the compound. That will cause a stir.

The Sandaime has a long day ahead of him. Very little about this went to plan.

"We need to cover our tracks," says Sasuke. He is tired and practicality is all he has left right now.

Itachi is too worn to argue. Sasuke leads and his brother follows.

**Author's Note:**

> This was, again, written on my phone (I say that a lot lately, hmm). If there was something in particular that you liked, let me know! :)


End file.
